41 comments:

The weird thing about all those vintage alien comics is the title: those books are either "stories", "novels","fantasies", etc. But other than that, aliens have good tastes if most of the women on those covers look like Marilyn Monroe clones.

Actually, according to the History Channel, they crave both sexes and all races.

I love the fact that History has basically taken the stance "Enough bullshit, these things are real, now let's try to find out more".

Very brave. Clearly, their funding doesn't come from any governmental agencies.

But what's too bad, as far as art is concerned, is that now that so many people have had encounters with extra terrestrials and taken photos or drawn pictures from memory, no one wants to design an alien from scratch using pure imagination.

Every alien character that gets designed now HAS to look white, skinny, short and naked with a big head and giant black almond shaped eyes... or some variation on that design.

It was better when we had absolutely no frame of reference and had only our imagination to guide us which lead to, as you pointed out John, some very interesting results.

These days in entertainment, there's something about having to take the fantastic and make it realistic that I don't understand. I may get flogged for this, but I LOVED the Speed Racer movie ( not too fond of the cartoon, though ) and part of the reason is it reminded me of a time when movies weren't afraid to create a world unto itself which had only a few rememberances of 'reality'.

Now, though, we can't have a superhero movie that takes place in a weird unearthly place like Gotham City without it looking exactly like New York. Iron Man was good, but not great because they had to set it in the real world ( read: dumb it down ) whereas Speed Racer existed solely in the world created in the cartoon.

The same is true of modern alien designs. We can create a new alien character, but he better not look like Giger's alien because we 'know' aliens don't look like that in reality.

I recently tried to draw a couple of alien-type creatures, out of my head. They didn't quite work. Looking at these alien designs, do you have advice on how to design them? I know this is about aliens craving women, but I really would love to know from a design standpoint.

Cartoonists have always known that space aliens go gaga over earth babes. Ward Kimball depicted this interplanetary lust quite well in Disney's "Mars and Beyond". (John, you should post up that clip - it's on YouTube as"Mars and Beyond 2 of 6")

that 'man of tomorrow' must really be used to seeing weird lookin blob guys - that alien has no effect on him at all! even his gun doesn't seem to bother shooting it properly (though right at the eyeball too)

I think NASA should design their next batch of space suits to show off the female astronauts' shapely legs. The current ones make them look frumpy. Then they wouldn't have such a hard time obtaining federal funding. These covers have the right idea.

I Too loved the Speed Racer movie and got flogged majorly by my peers who never even saw the flick. The funny thing is most people I know that DID see it loved it immensly and wondered why the critics hated it so much. I guess people are afraid of anything imaginative nowadays. Screw Realism.

I love the imaginative way aliens and outer space were depicted in the 40's and 50's. Those are such wild,bizzare and breathtakingly futuristic depictions! I wish those guys would have made some space cartoons or movies! its really astounding to see how creative we were before everyone got lazy and decided to glue ridges on an actors forehead and call them a klingon,and make robots look like humans with all the cyborg crap. Such a glaring lack of imagination.

Now we're too lazy to even think up a futuristic looking robot like Robby in Forbidden Planet and all of the outer space movies made now feature dark hellish planets,and crappy grimy bolt ridden spaceships and humanoid aliens or cliched hell monsters.

Cartoons have it all over live action when it comes to sci-fi and outerspace subjects,with this format the only limitations are the artists imagination!

Somewhere I have an old sci-fi magazine like that that shows a group of one eyed aliens with cone shaped heads and speaker grille type mouths sitting around a lake of fire with glowing sphere floating in it!

Those are some great and sexy posters of aliens. By the way, did you ever notice that while male aliens crave Earth women, female aliens are usually distrustful or even disdainful of Earth men (though some come around after a smooch or two). Just something I noticed.

Hi, JohnSorry as I might be wasting your time, but I really find your blog interesting and useful.I'm an animator from Russia and I work on clay and 2d animation at a studio called "Pilot". I was just wondering, if you would mind if I translate some of your posts and repost them in my blog at son4apon4a.livejournal.com, as I find your stuff real inspiring, and it's real bad that russian animators don't speak english... anyway, i'm the greatest fan of the ren and stimpy show, they are pretty popular out here in Russia.So thanks anyway, sorry for bothering youSonya

I don't think the clip of the Roger tests are still up online, but Eric's been trying for a sequel for a while. He claimed to have tried animation tests which he said 'didn't work' and decided 3d was the way to go.